Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro has long been a master at telling the best kind of fairy tales. He’s back and better than ever with The Shape of Water, which manages to be both dark and marvelously romantic. Del Toro takes a drab, institutional setting and somehow makes it singularly beautiful. He employs a bevy of great actors: Sally Hawkins plays a mute janitor who falls in love with a fish-man being held at the government facility she cleans everyday with her buddy Octavia Spencer. Richard Jenkins is perfect as Hawkins’ lonely, starving-artist homosexual neighbor, and Michael Shannon once again shows off just how intense and scary he can be as a heartless 1950s government agent eager to dissect the miraculous fish-man. Lastly the wonderfully sympathetic Michael Stuhlbarg plays a scientist with a big secret. THE WORD: With storycraft so tight and imagery so hypnotizing, audiences should stay engaged from the first minute to the last, and Hawkins’ performance is worthy of an Oscar. THE WHERE: Theaters, Home Video